Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai hardly had a moment to relax after he took over the Israel Defense Force central command from Gen. Amram Mitzna on Friday.
By Sunday, Mordechai already had a stormy weekend behind him, with one Israeli soldier wounded in a firebomb attack, one accused Palestinian collaborator murdered, at least two Palestinians wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers and several curfews imposed.
Army forces raided 17 West Bank villages on Friday, from the Nablus region in the North to the hills of Hebron in the South. The soldiers searched the areas for suspected troublemakers, detaining many.
In clashes with local youths during the raids, two Palestinians, one in Bethlehem and one in the village of Saffa, were lightly wounded.
Mordechai, known for his uncompromising policies in the Gaza Strip, where until Friday he served as head of the southern command, immediately took tough steps against anticipated unrest in the West Bank.
Shortly after the change-of-guard ceremony Friday, the general ordered a curfew to be imposed on five refugee camps. The curfews were put in place reportedly because of intelligence reports that unrest was planned for the camps.
After a firebomb attack Sunday on an IDF patrol in Nablus left one soldier wounded, Mordechai imposed another curfew, this time on the Nablus casbah and the Ras el-Ein neighborhood.
SHOPS SEALED IN KHAN YUNIS
Mordechai previously made frequent use of curfews in the Gaza Strip. Two months ago, he imposed a general curfew on the entire area for a week, keeping some 700,000 people in their homes.
Although he had told his associates that he was well aware of the differences between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where half the population lives in refugee camps, Mordechai is expected to continue using curfews and other forms of collective punishment in the West Bank as a means of restoring law and order.
Meanwhile, it is believed three Palestinians murdered over the weekend were killed by fellow Palestinians.
One of the murders took place in a village near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. The victim was a Palestinian who had been suspected of collaborating with the Israelis.
The two other killings occurred in the Ketziot detention camp in the Negev.
The bodies of two detainees, Mahmoud Salem Ali Jish, 31, of the El-Bureij refugee camp, and Ziyyad Abdul Mahmoud Bana, 28, of Gaza, were found dead Saturday morning in the prison camp.
The men allegedly were strangled by another detainee, Mahmoud Izzat Ali Sha’aban, who confessed to the killings. Sha’aban reportedly told his interrogators that he killed one of the men for collaborating with the authorities, and the other for having sexual relations with another prisoner.
In the Gaza Strip, 20 people were wounded over the weekend in clashes with security forces.
The army sealed off 20 shops Friday on the main street of the town of Khan Yunis. The action was apparently punishment for the throwing of a hand grenade at an army patrol the night before, which wounded three soldiers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
